The grocery industry is large and so are its information needs. More than half a trillion transactions are conducted in the grocery industry each year.

There is general consensus that movement, inventory, category management, and target marketing data are valuable for

• Fine-tuning products carried by stores to the demographics of the population surrounding each store
  
  
• Converting legacy supply chain management to demand chain management
  
  
• Test marketing products, packaging, and advertising

The Internet has proven that shoppers also want access to information. Consumers are increasingly seeking shopping solutions which help them save time while providing quality goods and services. They want information about their own purchasing patterns, grocery budget, easy-to-use nutritional data, price comparisons of local supermarkets, computations of least cost (may involve trips to more than one store) and most efficient (may cost more than least cost basket) shopping baskets, and delivery options.

At the same time, consumers want privacy and trustworthiness.

Most stores collect no consumer data. Of those that do, many botch it. From a shopper’s perspective, few do more than differentiate between members and non-members. Frequent shopper programs are not tailored to today’s busy lifestyles. Most do not give shoppers on-line access to personal shopping data and productivity tools. Dialog at checkout lanes is not adjusted to specific customer profiles. Which is perhaps why, according to AC Neilsen, half of all shoppers do not participate in card programs when made available.

CRISP’s information gathering and management accommodates shoppers as well as retailers and suppliers. See Customer Relationship Management White Paper.

Food coupons are an example of potential third-party markets for information. More than 200 billion discount coupons for food products are distributed annually in the USA. About 3 billion are redeemed. Nearly 14¢ is spent handling each coupon. Coupon reimbursements to merchants are a constant source of friction between wholesalers, merchants, and manufacturers.

Despite spending $420 million on coupon handling costs — above and beyond the redemption value (of more than $1.2 billion) and printing and distribution costs — manufacturers receive little assurance products are actually purchased for each redeemed coupon. They receive no marketing information about other products purchased in combination with “couponed” products. An estimated 60% of redeemed coupons are presented for products customers would have purchased even if coupons were not available.

CRISP — which validates and pre-processes redeemed coupons, captures desired tie-in marketing information, and transmits redemption information—has potential for producing transaction based revenue by organizing a chaotic process. When combined with a preferred shopper card, which may also be a MasterCard or VISA card, manufacturers take advantage of coupon kiosks in stores to eliminate shortcomings of print media coupons. By inserting their card in a kiosk before shopping, customers could receive coupons shortly before making purchase decisions without the hassle of clipping coupons.

Coupons may be targeted specifically to each customer’s past purchases. For example, only customers who had previously purchased dog food would receive dog food coupons. And, Ralston Purina might decide to dispense coupons to previous purchasers of Alpo, but not to previous purchasers of Purina.

As the largest potential consumer database — and as one of the few realtime consumer databases — the information captured by CRISP also has substantial value outside the food industry for direct marketing and for general economic forecasting. Analytics and collaboration management are performed by MicroNEX’s Information Group.